IS Consultancy skills

Some of us within Smart421 are currently looking at the “softer” skills required to enhance and develop our approach to running Consultancy engagements.  This isn’t about Project Management or Business Analysis, although these are important parts of any engagement.  It’s more about building relationships, managing the client, understanding personalities, leading teams and so on.

With this in mind, I’ve just finished a fairly intensive 5-day training course towards the ISEB certificate in IS Consultancy Practice.  The course is a great compliment to my ISEB Diploma in Business Analysis and builds on some of the ideas from the diploma.

Our trainer was Sue Calvert from Parity Training, who did a great job of covering a huge breadth of material, building in plenty of case study time for the group and keeping us interested for 5 days – thanks Sue! You can see the aims and syllabus on the Parity Training website, so I won’t repeat it all here.

I was joined by David Clothier of Siemens and Faisal Choudhry of Fujitsu.  Whilst it would have been good to have more people on the course, to get the ideas flowing and see how other people approached the case study, we got on well and managed to keep the energy up during the group work.

We covered a lot of ground, so there was an obvious trade-off in terms of depth.  But good use of case study work and homework (gasp!) really helped us get a better feel for some of the more important aspects.

Thursday’s homework was preparing a 10 minute presentation on a topic from the syllabus – I chose “Managing Bids and Contracts”, as these are areas that everyone in Smart421 is regularly involved in.

Some of the key things I learned or had re-inforced were:

• Identify Supporters and manage Blockers
  It’s crucial to understand who can help and hinder the achievement of your objectives.  Assuming your Sponsor isn’t a Blocker (!), get them to help with this.
• Use appropriate analysis tools and techniques to prompt you to capture and manage information
  Used well, MOST, SWOT, PESTLE, RACI, MANDACT (and many more!) can be really helpful.
• Build the relationship
  This is something that Smart421 already does pretty well – don’t treat engagements as one-off’s.  Build trust, demonstrate capability by delivering, identify other areas where you can genuinely help the client and the relationship will bloom and grow!
• Identify and manage Risks
  There are risks within the assignment, and there will be other risks to us as the supplier of Consultancy services.  It’s important to track all of these.
• Always clarify the budget
  This really determines whether the solution is Bugatti Veyron or Chevrolet Lacetti.  We forgot to do this at one stage on the case study.  D’oh.  Although we did find ways to make huge savings for the imaginary client – creating additional budget!
• Understand Mindsets, Personality Types and Motivations
  In the client and in your consultancy team.  This helps to tailor your approach, communication and deliverables, get the best out of your team and deliver maximum value to the client.
• People, Process, Technology
  In any transformation, remember there’s more to a solution than the IT/IS component.

I’m looking forward to putting some of these learnings into practice on upcoming engagements.

Fingers crossed for the 2 hour written exam on 14th August!  Must remember to make time for revision…

 

What does a Chief Technology Officer do in a services company?

I’ve just been through the interesting process of defining and negotiating my role and responsibilities as CTO in a services company. As part of this process, I naturally turned to the primary research tool at my disposal (a.k.a. Google) and found that there wasn’t a huge amount out there – so I thought I’d do my bit for the greater good and post a precis of the results.

Smart421 is primarily a service company offering integration and managed services, and so the CTO role is necessarily different to what it would be in a product-biased organisation, or in the on-IT sector. Therefore this role definition is heavily skewed towards the important challenges that we face in an ITIL, SOA, SaaS, cloud, storage, enterprise architecture etc world…

The CTO role is primarily outward facing, being responsible for defining the role that specific technologies and related methods will play in Smart421’s future growth and where technology and products and services related to it can contribute to providing a competitive advantage. Rather than being the senior technologist in the company, the CTO is the management team member with the responsibility for providing sound advice on business decisions relating to technology.

The function of the Chief Technology Officer is to:

• Monitor and assess new technologies, tools and methodologies relevant to our current and future propositions
• Instigate and oversee research activities
• Using this input, maintain our technology strategy and ensure its alignment to business strategy
• Implement this strategy by agreeing actions to be taken within other areas of the company
• Lead the technology practices
• Support sales and marketing activities
• Provide reliable technical assessment of potential mergers and acquisitions
• Promote Smart421 within the external technology community

PS Thanks are due to Roger Smith whose article from his time at Titan Corporation that I did find on the web…

 

BCS Enterprise Architecture Specialist Group – Inaugural meeting

Last evening another colleague from Smart421 (Nathan Pinkney) and I attended this inaugural meeting of the British Computer Society Enterprise Architecture specialist group in Leeds at the Met Hotel. The evening consisted of the procedural activities required to set up a new specialist group as part of the BCS, followed by a presentation.

The procedural aspects were interesting in themselves, as I learned about the scrutiny applied to organisations who have charitable status such as the BCS, and therefore the degree of rigour required in the constitution of the group, financial controls etc. Thanks are definitely due to Mike Buck and the other committee members for getting the group to the birthing pool…

But the most interesting parts of the evening were when debates and discussions kicked off concerning various aspects of the purpose of the group, and therefore enterprise architecture in general. The diversity of the audience surprised me – the turnout was good at about 30+ people of the 280 or so BCS members who have signed up to be part of the group. The level of debate showed that there was some great minds out there, which encouraged me as I wasn’t sure what the mix of skills/experience levels was going to be like. There’s something you get from chatting to your peers across other industry sectors that you just cannot get from any other source…I talked to people with an EA interest from a military perspective, banking (they got a “boo hiss”!), trading etc. It was great!

The key discussions that came out were:

• The dreaded definition of EA vs IT architecture – eventually we managed to move on from this once will all agreed that it wasn’t massively productive. As it is necessarily mentioned in the group’s constitution – this was bound to come up.
• Selling the benefits of EA – there was lots of healthy debate about whether it was arrogant of people from an IT background to claim a stake in the business architecture world, and whether this was credible. For me, this debate really brought out the different perspectives of the audience, e.g. when examples were used to amplify a point, they were almost exclusively IT examples, even though most of the group were saying that IT architecture was just a subset of enterprise architecture.
• The group was not about creating yet another EA framework, i.e. a BCSEAF – thank God for that. There’s enough of them out there – it’s the application of them and the benefits that flow from them that is key IMHO.
• The fact that the British Computer Society was the vehicle being used to progress EA in the UK was interesting – and in general we agreed that whilst this rather laid bare the IT heritage that the EA discipline has, it was the best and most obvious vehicle we had. An interesting analogy put forward by one attendee was the journey that project management has made – i.e. from being managing IT projects, to now a broad acceptance that we manage ‘change’, and IT change is just part of a project.

The presentation at the end was by Judith Jones of Architecting the Enterprise, a TOGAF training organisation that happens to be Smart421’s preferred training provider for TOGAF. As you’d expect, the presentation was very TOGAF-centric and 50%+ a sales pitch, and didn’t really address it’s key question (“EA in the credit crunch”) – but it still provided me with a few thought provoking moments where things that I’d realised but not really crystalised in my head became clear. I’ll write about these some other time…

I’m delighted that two of my colleagues from Smart421 (Nathan Pinkney and John Rutter) have been voted in as part of the committee so that we can give this fledgling group our support. I admire their energy . Let’s see where we can take it.

 

Presentation at the WUG about an innovative use of DataPower

A quick blatant plug – my colleague Stuart Smith is going to give a presentation at the forthcoming UK WebSphere User Group meeting on the following theme:

DataPower XI50 has a broad set of features. By using them in innovative ways, Smart421 built an electronic form submission solution for a national revenue collection service which consisted of only one component: the XI50.

Utilising existing features of MS Excel, backing spreadsheets with XML schemas, and then using DataPower to service and accept submissions of the document, a ‘one box solution’ was created for the client allowing extremely quick development and delivery of a live solution (less than 1 week).

This presentation will talk through the design of the solution, concentrating on separation of concerns, reusability and maintainability. A design pattern around 2 step validation (schema XSD level, and business level) will also be discussed.

Should be interesting – this will definitely be about capability rather than a tedious sales pitch…or else I’ll be walking out

 

Telematics and retail insurance (aka “PAYD”)

First posting to the Smart421 blog.  Maybe I should just do a “hello world” effort?
Ach well, in for a penny…

Someone sent me a link to the Coverbox website a few weeks ago, as they knew I’d been involved, with Smart421, in Norwich Union’s Pay As You Drive (PAYD) programme in 2005/2006.  Last week, someone else sent me a link to this article on the future of Telematics within retail insurance which says:

“The company that clears the remaining hurdles first will undoubtedly steal a competitive march and grasp the opportunity to decommoditise a segment of the market”

Before I go any further, let me make it clear that I haven’t yet investigated the detail of how the Coverbox proposition works, either on a technical or contractual basis, although I’d be delighted if someone else has done and can set me straight.  So, with that in mind, these are just some thoughts triggered by the above websites…

By “hurdles” and “decommoditise” the author might mean things like:

• whoever figures out how to provide PAYD-type insurance cost-effectively
• whoever creates a genuinely valuable proposition for potential customers (ie not just insurance, but other stuff on top)
• it needs to become more than just a question of which insurer offers the cheapest insurance whether standard or PAYD

I’m inclined to disagree, at least to some extent, in regards to de-commoditisation.  If PAYD insurance is really ”the future” (and I can see arguments on both sides – but that’s another discussion), then I think part of the answer is to make the technology boxes and backbone (i.e. the expensive bits!) totally commoditised.  This is in line with trendy SaaS and Cloud principles, and it seems to me to be the only way to truly benefit from economies of scale in this area.

Enter Coverbox who, from November 2008, basically provide a PAYD “COTS” service that insurers can re-sell.  It’s then down to each insurer to create the value-added bit that will attract customers to use Coverbox through them, rather than a rival insurer.  This significantly lowers the barrier to entry, making it much easier for an insurer to join the PAYD game.

One of the next  “hurdles” might be whether and how the insurers can exploit the data generated by their customers - e.g. data sales, heavy-duty analysis to inform actuarial and pricing decisions, etc.  Assuming insurers can access the data on their insured parties (and only their insured parties) as held by Coverbox, they’re not much worse off than if they were running the database themselves.

However, I’d guess Coverbox will be retaining ultimate ownership of (anonymised) data and the right to sell this to third parties.  I’d also guess Coverbox won’t (yet?) provide a real-time, OLTP/OLAP capable database on which multiple insurers can happily dredge their data 24/7.  So does that mean the next opportunity is how to offer that analysis capability to insurers cost-effectively?

Coverbox’s website is already pushing the commodity aspect by telling customers they can choose from a panel of insurers to get the best price.  So insurers will need to position themselves and their value-add offerings quickly in order to “decommoditise” PAYD – otherwise Coverbox’s own message will dominate and part of the opportunity offered by PAYD will disappear.

Crikey…550 words for my first posting…maybe I’ll do a “hello world” next time.

Jamie.

PS The thoughts behind this post have already generated a bit of debate within Smart421, so there may be some follow-up comments coming soon.

Update…I’ve been reading a bit more detail in the Coverbox and CobraWunelli websites.  Still not a huge amount of information regarding how the technology actually works, but it seems that one of the components underlying Coverbox is M2M Connect, the international mobile telemetry platform from Orange.

This is especially interesting for us as Smart421 were involved in the creation of M2M Connect and continue to manage part of this service for Orange.

 

The Value of Experience

As a systems integrator and consultancy, we at Smart421 frequently have to justify to potential clients why they should use us, and explain what value we provide to their organisation.

Thinking on this point, which is primarily an issue for sales and marketing types, you will also realise that this applies at a personal level too – as an individual, during regular personnel reviews, or if you are job hunting, people need to explain the value that you bring to a company. I’m not gong to discuss the approaches that bring best results in these particular aspects (hey, we are all in competition at some level or other, but if you want to make a pitch to join Smart421 you can certainly check on our job openings and apply – a good pitch from you can get you into the team).

Back to the consultancy aspect, a prospective client has to feel comfortable that we will provide a level of service that they will be happy with, and that helps them in achieving something that they may not otherwise be able to do at that time. So what are clients buying? Two things, I would say. First is the approach that we bring in working to resolve their problems. Second is the experience and expertise that we hold as a company.

Smart421 has expertise over the whole area of the software lifecycle, right from strategy, enteprise architecture and analysis through to application design, development, delivery and support. We also handle migration and retirement of systems at the end of their useful life too. Within that whole range, we have knowledge of numerous software products and platforms, alternative project management approaches, quality controlled processes for delivery and service management as well as our own controls for staff and finances as required for any company.

If a single person held all of these skills, how valuable do you think they would be to your company?

An application from someone that could list and validate all of this knowledge on their C.V. would seem almost unbelievable. But that is what you get if you use our services – access to all of that knowledge and expertise, provided on either an individual or team basis.

Any commercial agreement will of course define the terms of each particular engagement, so you don’t get endless access to all of this just through using an individual consultant. That consultant does however have this backup to refer to, increasing their value substantially to the end client. For a team of consultants, that provides more of the same, through greater points of contact and an enhanced collective viewpoint. If you could create a small internal team with this large amount and range of knowledge, imagine the potential benefits to your business.

When project work is handled by Smart421, this same set of skills and knowledge will be used to assure reliable delivery, using best practice and with our commitment to providing the best solution to meet client needs.

Enough of the sales pitch. I just thought it worthwhile to put forward some viewpoints about the value of using at Smart421, especially from the point of view of being part of the team that has to deliver on our promises.

So next time you are considering the use of third-party resources and question the value over that of internal resources, or plain hired-in contractors, this should provide some food for thought about what you are actually buying from such a consultancy.

 

Consultancy and Travelling

As a consultant with Smart421, it is part of the job spec that the work I am engaged in will involve an amount of travel. Some may see that as a perk of the job. For others, it may be a reason not to take on such a role.

For my part, I don’t particularly like the travelling itself, but do like to go to different places, meet different people, and generally ’spread my wings’.

Since my co-workers have already made some comments about a recent trip to Bangkok, I thought I’d list the places I’ve had to travel for Smart421. To be honest, most of our work is in the UK, where we have the strongest customer base, but we do work with clients all over the world. To give an idea of this, the locations I have worked at include:

• London
• Ipswich
• Norwich
• Leeds
• Bradford
• Knutsford
• Salisbury
• Slough
• Hounslow
• Bristol
• Amsterdam, Netherlands
• Bucharest, Romania
• Vancouver, Canada
• Bangkok, Thailand

I know that staff have worked all over the UK and in other overseas locations too – Ireland, France and Switzerland would certainly feature in lists from some of my colleagues.

So, not exactly a glamorous list of locations (we aren’t trolley dollies after all), but from my perspective this line of work certainly beats a regular job with a daily commute to the same place every week of the year.

 

Welcome to the Smart421 Weblog!

Welcome to the Smart421 Weblog!

 At Smart421, we have a dedicated team of Lead Consultants, highly experienced in areas including:

• Enterprise Architecture (EA) and TOGAF
• Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
• IBM WebSphere, Datapower and J2EE
• Microsoft BizTalk and .NET
• Service Management and ITIL

In a series of forthcoming posts, we’re hoping to share our experiences and thoughts with you from a pragmatic and real-world perspective.

 Happy reading!